Jaeger the Scent Computer

Jaeger the Scent Computer

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
A fascinating discussion with Damon Bungard about his tracking dog, Jaeger, and the way Jaeger follows the trail of a wounded animal.

“My personal theory is this and this is just from what I've seen and what I know and it varies between the signature from a bullet wound versus an arrow. When a bullet hits a deer, you don't realize that there's a 30 yard cone of scent behind that shot. It’s a big impact scent. With a bow, not so much, it doesn’t have that blow out factor. Hunters, they're like, yeah, you know, he was standing about here and he went that way. And by the time they've said he went that way, Jaeger’s already 30 yards down the trail and they're like, wow, he knows exactly where he went. He does. My personal theory, it varies by species. So Jaeger’s now recovered mule deer, pronghorn elk, boar and white tail. They all have different sitting signatures, but we'll just focus on white tail. The Whitetail have what's called the inter-digital scent. They have a scent gland between their hoofs and it's like a fingerprint for that deer. They communicate to each other with it when they rub scrapes when they walk. Deer can tell deer apart. The dog and tell deer apart by that scent gland. And there's different theories as to once a deer is wounded. Does it put out more scent and as it runs, easier to pick up on? Who knows? Then there's blood scent. There's eventually organ scent, dander scent. So to me, it’s scent soup. It's like mathematically some of ABCD and E equals X. I don't know if he always has ABCD and E. Sometimes I think he only has A and B and he figures it out.

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